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Whatever happened between us, whatever it means, I can’t look at her and not smile. She’s beautiful. She’s perfect. And she means everything to me.

“Good morning,” I say.

“Morning,” she replies with a shy smile.

“Sleep okay?”

She nods, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Yeah. Really well, actually. You?”

“Like a rock.”

There’s none of the awkwardness of the past couple of days. No tension, no fight. Just the two of us skating around something strange and forbidden and yet somehow sweet. So I cross the kitchen and take her face gently in my hands and kiss her. When I pull back, she looks flushed and pleased.

“Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.” She smiles, and the shyness dissolves.

I pull out the pancakes and plate the bacon while she gets a mug and fills it with coffee. “God, this smells amazing.” She picks up a piece of bacon from the plate on the counter and bites into it. “Oh my God. Perfect crispness.”

We carry our plates to the dining room table and eat by the twinkling lights of the tree. Sophie demolishes her pancakes, but I can barely eat. I watch her out of the corner of my eye and remember vividly what it was like to have my mouth between her legs, to taste her as she came. The cognitive dissonance should be crippling, but it’s not. Not this morning. For now, at least, it feels lovely and all ours.

After breakfast, she helps me load the dishwasher and then we settle in front of the tree to open presents. I sit on the couch and Sophie drops onto the floor, picking up a medium-sized box wrapped in silver paper and cooing, “Ooh, for me!”

She tears into it and exclaims when she finds a pair of wireless headphones she wanted.

“Thank you!” she says in a sing-song voice, beaming at me.

The next package is small and flat. This one is a leather-bound journal that she didn’t ask for, but that I thought she might like. Her initials are embossed on the cover in gold foil: S.K.

“Oh my God, it’s beautiful!” She runs her fingers over the leather, opens it to the creamy blank pages inside. “Thank you.”

The last package is a bookstore gift card for fifty dollars, which she pockets with a satisfied nod, and a box of fancy chocolates from the shop in town. She opens the chocolates immediately and offers me one, which I decline on principle.

“Your turn,” she says, pushing a stack of packages toward me.

The first is a pair of leather gloves from her to me. Really nice ones, buttery soft. The next is a photograph in a simple wooden frame. Me and Sophie, last summer, sitting on the dock with our feet in the water. She’s laughing and I’m smiling at her, and we look so free and happy.

“I took it on my phone,” she says. “Remember? All those photos with the timer. That one was the best one.”

I remember that afternoon. Sophie had spent so long trying to get the timer to work, laughing every time we ended up with another photograph of me looking at the camera blankly as she rushed to get into place. I look at the picture again, already knowing exactly where I’ll put it in my office.

“It’s perfect,” I say. “Thank you.”

“I have one more present for you,” she says. “But I have to go upstairs to get it.”

“Oh, honey,” I tell her. “You didn’t need to get me anything at all. This is already so much.”

“No.” She stands up. “This is better. Way better. Stay right there.” She points at me. “I’ll be right back.”

“Okay,” I say. Judging by her expression, I should probably brace myself.

When she comes back down a few minutes later, my brain completely short-circuits.

She’s wearing a red lace bra and matching panties and nothing else. Wrapped around her waist, tied in a bow above her hipbone, is a length of wide red ribbon. She presents herself, lifting her arms, and says, “Merry Christmas.”

My cock responds first, twitching in my pants. I set my coffee down very carefully on the side table.

“Oh . . . Sophie.”